We’ve gotten a lot of feedback on our crazy, exciting, and scary talent overhaul, for which we are enormously appreciative. For real and for true. We *want* your feedback on the new talents. That is why we are presenting so much detail so early. While we will continue to iterate on talent specifics, your feedback is an important part of that process. Don’t abstain because you’re convinced that things will change without you. Your input is one of our most important tools for improving the game.

We have seen a few consistent responses from players concerned or dismissive about the model, so we thought we’d take the opportunity to explain the philosophy behind some of our decisions, to provide a better framework upon which you can continue giving us feedback.

1. "I have fewer choices."
This is the big one, and the truth is it is ultimately correct. You will have fewer choices. But you will have more choices that *matter*. One of the important philosophies of game design is that interesting choices are fun. The word ‘interesting’ is key. Choosing between a talent that grants 10% damage and one that grants 5% damage, all else being equal, isn't interesting (unless perhaps you’re a superstar role-player). Choosing between a talent that grants you 5% haste or 5% crit might be interesting, but more than likely there is still a right answer (and like most of us, you'll probably just ask someone else what the answer is.) Choosing between a talent that grants you a root or a snare can be interesting. Which does more damage? Hard to say. Which is better? It depends on the situation.

This is why we don't have a clear damage, tanking, and healing talent choice every tier. In the case of the old trees, choosing the talent you want from among the talents that don’t interest you isn’t an interesting decision -- it's a multiple choice test, and an easy one at that. Are you Ret? You probably want the damage option. But what if the Ret player had to choose from three healing talents and couldn't sacrifice healing for damage? Now it gets interesting. Worst case scenario is the player just picks one at random because he refuses to heal. However, he has the ability. Maybe he'll use it in some situation. Meanwhile, other players will be happy that they can benefit more from the hybrid nature of the paladin class without having to give up damage to do so.

2. "There weren't cookie cutter builds."
You're wrong. Next!

To be fair, we did manage to engineer most of the Cataclysm talent trees to include a few legitimate choices. These typically occur when you need to spend enough points to get to the next tier of a tree to get the good stuff. Many specs had 1-4 points to spend wherever they want. That's a huge victory compared to pre-Cataclysm talent trees, but ultimately nothing to really brag about.

It is possible of course to strike a blow for individuality and use a non-cookie cutter build. Ninety-nine percent of the time, these builds are just going to be less effective. The remaining percent of the time, they will eventually become the new cookie-cutter. When players talk about their love of options, I think what they are really saying is they are in love with the idea of having dozens of interesting talents. We just don't think that will ever happen.

Look, we tried the talent tree model for seven years. We think it’s fundamentally flawed and unfixable. We know some of you have faith in us that someday we’ll eventually replace all of the boring +5% crit talents with interesting talents and give you 80 talent points that you can spend wherever, and that the game will still remain relatively balanced and fun. We greatly appreciate your faith, but we fear it is misplaced. It’s not a matter of coming up with enough fun mechanics, which is challenging but ultimately doable. The problem is the extreme number of combinations. When you have such a gigantic matrix, the chances of having unbeatable synergies, or combinations of talents that just don’t work together is really high. That’s not lazy design. That is recognizing how math works.

So given that we don’t think it’s humanly possible to have 40-50 fun, interesting and balanced talents in a tree, the alternative is to continue on with bloated trees that have a ton of inconsequential talents that you have to slog through to get to the fun stuff. A lot of you guys have stuck with us for years, continue to play regularly, and still love World of Warcraft. You are the reason we’re still making this game. We think you deserve better, and we think we can do better.

3. "We'll still have cookie-cutter builds with the new design."
I am slightly amused by the number of comments that say "The theorycrafters will just math out which is the right talent and we'll all just pick that one." But the theorycrafters aren’t agreeing with those comments, because they know they won’t be able to.

Just to make sure, I chose several specs at random and researched their builds. Sure enough, even with the Cataclysm builds today, you see quotes like “spend the last two points wherever you want” or “choose X or Y at your discretion.” It is “easy” (which I put in quotes because theorycrafters devote a lot of time and neurons to it) to determine the value of a DPS talent like Incite or Ignite. It is hard to determine the DPS value of Improved Sprint or Lichborne. Most of the Mists talents are things like the latter. Now there are still some pure throughput (damage, healing, or tanking) talents in the trees. We expect there will sometimes be a right answer as to which talent to take for those roles. On a fight like Baelroc (one boss, no adds), Bladestorm and Shockwave probably aren't competitive with Avatar. We're okay with that, because on Beth'tilac (lots of adds) they definitely can be and it will depend a lot on your play style and the role you have in the fight. However, given that we know a player can only have one of those three talents and that the synergistic effects from those talents with other talents are limited, it is much easier for us to balance say the healing value of Archangel and Divine Star. Despite what you read on the forums, we actually have gotten better at balancing World of Warcraft over the years.

4. "No rewards for leveling."
Once upon a time, you got a new talent point every level. That worked okay for a game with 60 levels. It works less well for a game with 90 levels. It probably is totally incomprehensible for a game with 150 levels, should we ever get there. We keep bumping the level cap because frankly it’s fun and we haven’t yet come up with a progression mechanism that will feel quite as good.

Leveling is pretty fast these days and fairly rewarding, in that you see lots of new content and get gear quickly, which is something we have trouble replicating at max level (though stay tuned for Mists of Pandaria). On top of that, you’ll still get lots of abilities as you level up. Instead of having to click Raging Blow, we’ll just give it to you, because frankly if you skip it, you’re making a mistake (or you’re RPing a Fury warrior who has taken too many blows to the head). There are gaps in getting new abilities, especially at high level, because we don’t want players to have to have four rows of action bars to play their character. Again, that is just the blessing and curse of having a game with so many levels.

Third, I’ll challenge the notion of just how interesting it is to get that second point in Pain and Suffering or Rule of Law while leveling. Do you really notice that you now kill a creature in 2.9 GCDs instead of 3 GCDs? (But see below for a bit more on this.) There are some game-challenging talents of course, like Shadowform, but as we just discussed, you'll still get those.

Finally, the reality is that for many players, WoW has become a game focused on max level. Back in the day, leveling a fleet of alts was really compelling gameplay, but for many of the old-timers, there just isn’t a ton of interest in making a second mage or whatever. Hopefully account-level achievements will help with that somewhat, but at the same time, I don’t think it’s realistic to expect all of our long-term players to have thirty or more characters at some point in the future. It’s a fair concern that the new talent system is geared more towards making max level exciting, but that’s also where players tend to spend most of their WoW-playing hours these days. We don’t know yet what we are going to do for players who want to play a monk but just can’t stomach the idea of hitting Hellfire Peninsula one more time, and how we solve the problem when you get a friend to try WoW, only to discover that your pal will need to spend several weeks or months getting up to max level before he or she is ready to join your Arena team or raid group. But these feel like problems we are going to have to solve at some point.

5. "I like being better than noobs."
It was surprising and a bit disappointing at how frequently we saw this argument. The players in question fully admit that they don't experiment to find the best build. They accept the cookie cutter spec that is offered from a website, but then they use the fact that they knew the cookie cutter to mock players who don't. Intimate knowledge of game mechanics certainly is and should be a component of skill. But knowing how to Google "4.3 Shadow spec" doesn't automatically make you a better player. Sorry, but I’m just going to dismiss this one as an illegitimate concern.

6. "The talents are all PvP choices."
We see this response from players who say “I don’t care about PvP,” or “raid bosses can’t be snared,” or even “I am a solo player, so I don’t need a defensive cooldown.”

First, a lot of players do care about PvP, and almost every choice in the new talent model will be interesting for them. We are also taking some steps with Mists to encourage more crossover between PvP and PvE as the game once had, so even if you don’t care for PvP now, maybe we can get you interested in the future.

Second, a lot of raid bosses can’t be snared, but their adds and trash sure can be. We don’t do a lot of Patchwerk fights these days. Crowd control, movement increases, and defensive cooldowns are all an important part of raid encounters these days. They are even a part of dungeon encounters until you overgear the content.

Now if you're a solo player or a fairly casual raider and you don't often find the need to use crowd control or hit a defensive cooldown, then maybe the choice isn't compelling. But we think that's a problem with the game. I think it’s a fair complaint that our outdoor world creatures have become a little monotonous over the years. Once upon a time, you could choose to take on that camp of gnolls, or you could try and handle the elite ogres, or you might get a patrolling kobold. While we don’t want outdoor leveling to be brutally difficult, that doesn’t mean that every situation needs to be solved with 3 Sinister Strikes. Imagine a cave full of weak spiders. You can choose to AE them all down, use a movement cooldown to get through the cave quickly, use a defensive cooldown to survive the damage, or use your heals to keep you up. When players use their full toolbox of abilities intelligently, they tend to feel good about their character and the game. But it is our responsibility to engineer more of those situations into the world.

7. "Spec doesn’t matter."
This is a concern especially for warriors, priests, DKs and the pure classes (those characters who have multiple specs of the same role). What we have concluded is that many players want to choose their spec based on flavor (“I want to be the mage who uses Frost magic”) or rotation (“I like the fast gameplay of the Frost DK”). While the raid buff / debuff matrix and spec utility helps to encourage diversity among groups and discourage raid stacking, it’s also a little lame when the Affliction lock is asked to spec Demonology (against the player’s desire) in order to bring a specific buff. In Mists, we want players to have even more flexibility about which character they want to play. Asking a player to swap from damage to tanking for a couple of fights is acceptable to us. Asking someone to respec from Unholy to Frost just for the debuff is not.

There will still be some utility in the various specs, but less than we have today. You should pick a spec because you like the rotation or the kit. Fire is about crit, Hot Streak, and Ignite. Frost is about Shatter combos and the Water Elemental. Arcane is about mana management and clearing Arcane Blast stacks.

8. “It must be new to be good.”
This is a tricky one. Specifically, the warlock and druid trees include a lot of new talent ideas simply because we felt like those classes needed them. While we want to make an effort to add some new mechanics every expansion just to keep things fresh, we don’t want to arbitrarily replace fun talents that have stood the test of time just in the name of change for change’s sake. Bladestorm is fun. Body and Soul is fun. Shadowstep is fun.

From a designer’s perspective, the half-life of a new spell or talent idea is fleetingly short. You know how when you buy a new car and drive it off the lot it immediately loses a huge chunk of its value? New game ideas are like that. Seeing something brand new is super exhilarating, but that thrill just doesn’t last. I suspect even by the time Mists launches, we will see a lot of comments along the lines of “When are druids going to get something new? We haven’t seen any new ideas since November!”

It isn’t our goal to come up with 18 new talents for every class. We want to come up with 18 fun talents, and that’s going to mean a mix of old and new. Try not to confuse “shiny” with “good,” and we’ll try on our end not to fall into that trap as well.

9. “You overhaul talents every expansion. Please leave well enough alone.”
This is another tricky issue, because neither extreme (stagnation versus constant design churn) is appealing, and every individual player (and designer!) has a different definition of where those extremes lie. We changed talent trees in Cataclysm to try and fix some of the underlying problems the talent design had since its inception. We actually considered going to the Mists model for Cataclysm, but we were worried that the change would be too shocking to players, so we went with a more restrained design first. As often happens with compromises, it didn’t fix the underlying problems. Our hope is that this new design solves them once and for all. That isn’t a promise to not change talents for 6.0, 7.0, and beyond. But we hope that an overhaul this drastic isn’t necessary again for a long time to come.
MMOs are inherently living designs that are going to change over time. This is particularly true of subscription models, where players rightly expect to see something for their monthly payment. We don’t think it’s fair to cling to designs that aren’t working just because that’s the design we shipped with. As we have discussed a great deal lately, we will try to limit our big design changes to new expansions, but it’s just not in our DNA to leave something at a B- level if we think we can make it A+.

10. “You’ve got your minds made up and don’t care about what we think.”
You’re wrong. Next!

As I have said a million times, good games (maybe good anything) can’t be designed by popular vote. Our design feedback process is about making informed decisions. The developers will make the decisions we feel are right for the game, but we’ll do that armed with the feedback from players about what is fun and not fun for them. If you want to provide the best feedback possible, try to be succinct (we get a lot of feedback), try to be specific (why don’t you like something), and don’t assume you speak for everyone (game design, like art, is often subjective). Don’t get upset if we don’t implement your idea -- that’s just not a realistic expectation. Don’t confuse the echo chamber phenomenon that can occur in forum discussions for consensus. Most importantly, try to remember what will be fun for everyone, and not just your character.

One more thing to keep in mind: Playing with the new talent system in-game is really different from choosing talents on “paper.” Some of the decisions we made didn’t come about until we could get into the game and see how leveling and playing actually felt. Once we’re in alpha, many of you guys will be able to give us some more concrete feedback. We understand that, and we’re pushing for doing that just as soon as we can. In the meantime, enjoy the Hour of Twilight.

Please show me in the Vanilla, TBC, Wrath, or even Cataclysm talent trees where you have a level of meaningful choice that is even remotely close to the ones shown in the more complete talent trees (not Shaman) like Warlocks, Druids, Priests, etc.

I can think of quite a few examples. Warlocks in vanilla and TBC had several meaningful choices, they could choose to go full affliction, full demo, full destro or a mixture of affliction/demo or affliction/destro (not sure if there was a demo/destro combination, but I think there was at one time or another, never tried).

Druid healers in TBC could go tree or dreamstate.

Ferals could go full bear, full cat or a decent compromise for an off-tank role. Fury warriors could throw on a shield and off-tank. Healing Priests could also choose a mix of disc and holy talents that suited their playstyle and the current content they're playing. And don't forget PvP/PvE hybrid specs.

Yes there have always been "ej-recommended" specs for each role. But so what? You didn't HAVE to follow those suggestions. Want to play a big-dotting afflock with extra health pool for drain tanking? No problem, put a few points into demo to get the extra health. You have to sacrifice some damage but it could come in handy... ("Hello Curator").

With Wrath, they dissolved those choices and each spec was made cookie-cutter. With MoP, they're going even farther. My main gripe is that sure, while these optional non-cookie-cutter builds may have been suboptimal in the very top tier of raiding, at least at that time there WERE tiers of raiding (during which some of them were competitive with the cookie-cutter specs). You had to get a certain level of gear before you could progress to the next tier, and it took a lot of time to get to that final tier. Now, they just hand you a tier and that's the tier you play. Not enough gear for the current tier? No problem, 2 weeks of farming badges/justice/valor points/pvp points/etc. and it's yours.

So the issue is really a combination of less choice in customization and less tiers of raiding. If we have only 1 tier of raiding, then true, it doesn't make a lot of sense to have custom builds. But if there are multiple tiers, then more options during the progression towards that final min-max tier make the game more dynamic. And more fun.

Please don't cop out and say "we have 3 tiers of raiding now, LFR, normal and heroic." That's just ridiculous.

What I really love are the people who say things like:
"I'm dps I'll choose the one that does damage"
Its like they haven't even looked at the talent trees.

Or the ones who go with:
"Now I have to choose between 3 defensive cooldowns but I'm not a tank so don't need any"
Anyone who said that in my guild wouldn't be raiding, if you don't know why defensive cooldowns are so important in raids then you should just walk away from your computer now.

Personally from looking at the intention of the talent trees we will have more choice than ever before. I am a resto shaman and there are currently about 6 specs that you can use in a raid centering around if you want more movement, telluric currents or how you want to dispell.

Not all of the shaman tiers are currently that exciting, however tier 4 does look good and that tier alone gives me half of the meaningful choices the current system gives. Tier 5 nature's swiftness vs echo is going to be an interesting choice so I'm now up to 6 choices so drawing level with the current system. Tier 2 while less exciting than tier 4 also provides a decent choice in defensive cooldowns so with just 3 tiers I have more real options than I have currently.

If I look at it from an elemental point of view, Tier 5 now has 3 viable options while tier 4 looses fortifying waters as a reasonable choice, tier 2 is still interesting and tier 1 is going to be interesting when handling trash/adds.

Enhancement all 3 choices in tier 4 are useful, by using maelstrom procs for healing rain (a common practice by decent enhancement shaman) fortifying waters becomes a valid choice again.

So all three specs have more viable choices than they currently do. Tier 6 in my opinion sucks and I hope it changes and tiers 1 and 3 are going to be decided by the boss fight more than any choice in playstyle.

The one thing i find about this blizz post is they are outright rude!the "you are wrong" comments are not something a company should ever say to its customers. Its one thing saying it in the confines of the office, but you never say it to your clients, they get the feeling they are irrelevant and stupid rather than their input being valid.

The one thing i find about this blizz post is they are outright rude!the "you are wrong" comments are not something a company should ever say to its customers. Its one thing saying it in the confines of the office, but you never say it to your clients, they get the feeling they are irrelevant and stupid rather than their input being valid.

Is this the next step of political correctness? You don't tell people anymore when they are wrong? I hope this doesn't spread.

Is this the next step of political correctness? You don't tell people anymore when they are wrong? I hope this doesn't spread.

No its not political correctness, its good business sense. You don't openly tell people they are wrong, people resent that. You tell them things like "we have taken your comments on board" and stuff like that.

What I really love are the people who say things like:
"I'm dps I'll choose the one that does damage"
Its like they haven't even looked at the talent trees.

Or the ones who go with:
"Now I have to choose between 3 defensive cooldowns but I'm not a tank so don't need any"
Anyone who said that in my guild wouldn't be raiding, if you don't know why defensive cooldowns are so important in raids then you should just walk away from your computer now.

Personally from looking at the intention of the talent trees we will have more choice than ever before. I am a resto shaman and there are currently about 6 specs that you can use in a raid centering around if you want more movement, telluric currents or how you want to dispell.

Not all of the shaman tiers are currently that exciting, however tier 4 does look good and that tier alone gives me half of the meaningful choices the current system gives. Tier 5 nature's swiftness vs echo is going to be an interesting choice so I'm now up to 6 choices so drawing level with the current system. Tier 2 while less exciting than tier 4 also provides a decent choice in defensive cooldowns so with just 3 tiers I have more real options than I have currently.

If I look at it from an elemental point of view, Tier 5 now has 3 viable options while tier 4 looses fortifying waters as a reasonable choice, tier 2 is still interesting and tier 1 is going to be interesting when handling trash/adds.

Enhancement all 3 choices in tier 4 are useful, by using maelstrom procs for healing rain (a common practice by decent enhancement shaman) fortifying waters becomes a valid choice again.

So all three specs have more viable choices than they currently do. Tier 6 in my opinion sucks and I hope it changes and tiers 1 and 3 are going to be decided by the boss fight more than any choice in playstyle.

You get a choice out of 3 talents every 15 levels right? And none of them has a real impact on your performance. You can't really make mistakes.
Maybe one talent is better for a certain boss than the other but there isn't much to figure out other than that. And if you choose the 'wrong' one for one boss then it still doesn't matter. Only when you min/max it could maybe matter on a few bosses or when you PvP and you use some sort of tactic.

Ofcourse all the talents are usefull but it's still boring. And there is far less to choose from. Blue poster can say the choices now matter but they really don't because they have no real impact on your performance.

You can spin it every way you want but these talent trees are more boring than the ones in TBC and WotLK. As I said figuring out stuff in a new game is more fun and having more choices even if they 'don't matter' is more fun. Having cookie cutter builds handed out to you is boring.

don't they say the same thing every expansion...with TBC and wrath they said "we've fixed the talent trees to be more fun and true to our vision" - they didn't.they said the same in cata, now they're just reburning old questions and with the same answers "these will be more fun, we've got it right this time pinky promise".i'm putting bets on the new system will work but after 3 patches and 19 hot patches.and that's me being optimistic. We've seen more hot patches than other MMO's see patches.

No its not political correctness, its good business sense. You don't openly tell people they are wrong, people resent that. You tell them things like "we have taken your comments on board" and stuff like that.

But that would be a lie. They don't want to take "comments on board" from the "everythin sucks!"-crowd. When I'm in a restaurant ordering a meal, I trust the cook to get it right and don't just because I am paying will walk over into his kitchen and talk down to him. He is the cook with the cooking experience, I am only the guy who will eat the meal. Sure if he adheres to my "no onions" plea, I will be glad, but if his experience tells him the meal falls flat without, he'll add them and produce something that is generally more well rounded even if it's not perfect for my spoiled palate. And if I don't like it, I'll walk out without a tip.

7. "Spec doesn’t matter."This is a concern especially for warriors, priests, DKs and the pure classes (those characters who have multiple specs of the same role). What we have concluded is that many players want to choose their spec based on flavor (“I want to be the mage who uses Frost magic”) or rotation (“I like the fast gameplay of the Frost DK”). While the raid buff / debuff matrix and spec utility helps to encourage diversity among groups and discourage raid stacking, it’s also a little lame when the Affliction lock is asked to spec Demonology (against the player’s desire) in order to bring a specific buff. In Mists, we want players to have even more flexibility about which character they want to play. Asking a player to swap from damage to tanking for a couple of fights is acceptable to us. Asking someone to respec from Unholy to Frost just for the debuff is not.There will still be some utility in the various specs, but less than we have today. You should pick a spec because you like the rotation or the kit. Fire is about crit, Hot Streak, and Ignite. Frost is about Shatter combos and the Water Elemental. Arcane is about mana management and clearing Arcane Blast stacks.

Priest have to play DISC now is because of damage reduction from Power Word: Barrier can prevent 1-shots, which divine hymn(will become holy exclusive in mist) cannot.

With the radical change in disc and PW:B still exclusive to disc, this "problem" will worsen.

1. "I have fewer choices."This is the big one, and the truth is it is ultimately correct. You will have fewer choices. But you will have more choices that *matter*.

That summed it up right there.I am a disc priest, I heal in raids. If you really think choosing between a roots and a snare *MATTERS* to me then you are very much mistaken.I would like to choose options that buff abilities that I use, not just choose flavours of PvP abilities that they will make us use in fights to justify their inclusion.I do read up on my spec, I do try out different builds, I do test things out. I reforge for crit, add a dps metagem, and see if I can abuse the 4 set ICC bonus. I do try out Inner Will and a renew spec (as disc) for HC Atrimedes.I use an Attonement spec, a ToT spec, a Haste spec, a Shadowfiend spec. I like to choose my talents carefully and change them for different bosses when we are stuck on X for Y reason.The new talent trees give me as many new healing options and choices as Transmogrification and PokemonPets combined.

You get a choice out of 3 talents every 15 levels right? And none of them has a real impact on your performance. You can't really make mistakes.
Maybe one talent is better for a certain boss than the other but there isn't much to figure out other than that. And if you choose the 'wrong' one for one boss then it still doesn't matter. Only when you min/max it could maybe matter on a few bosses or when you PvP and you use some sort of tactic.

Ofcourse all the talents are usefull but it's still boring. And there is far less to choose from. Blue poster can say the choices now matter but they really don't because they have no real impact on your performance.

You can spin it every way you want but these talent trees are more boring than the ones in TBC and WotLK. As I said figuring out stuff in a new game is more fun and having more choices even if they 'don't matter' is more fun. Having cookie cutter builds handed out to you is boring.

It depends on what you count as your performance, none of the choices will make a significant difference to your HPS or DPS but can make a huge difference to your performance. With shaman I can't see any tier that will have as large a difference as speccing into telluric currents currently has, which is a bit disappointing. But then again I know shaman who had telluric currents who didn't cast lightning bolt and it didn't really make any difference to their performance.

Working out when its best to put that left over point in cleansing waters rather than acuity is not interesting. Out of the 6 valid shaman resto specs there are 2 interesting choices, if you should go for telluric current and if you should go for ghost wolf. Everything else is either mandatory or boring. Out of the first 20 points you put into resto shaman spec 19 are mandatory and without them you seriously gimp yourself, having 1 point to play with is not interesting. After that you have 11 mandatory points in the resto tree which opens up the other trees, from there you get to choose if you want to get elemental precision, if you do then all of you have no choice where to put your points.

So 1 viable spec has 1 boring choice in it.

If you decide not to go with elemental precision then you have to put 5 points into the elemental tree, many see this as mandatory which makes elemental precision not viable. So you now have 5 points, however, all of the places you can put the points require multiple points to be worthwhile (1 point in telluric currents for example is a waste, you either go all or nothing) So you can pick 2 from a list of 5 abilities: focused insight, telluric currents, ancestral swiftness, totemic reach, cleansing waters. As far as i'm concerned the only interesting ones are telluric currents, ancestral swiftness and to a lesser extent focused insight. You then put any left over points into acuity.

So I've made one boring choice to get access to the top of the resto tree, I've then made a couple of interesting choices with my left over points. Only 1 of those choices (getting telluric currents or not) is more interesting than the new talent system. Not every tier is going to be an interesting choice, on certain bosses there wont be any choice for a tier. But, except for the very rare pure tank and spank fight, my talent choices are going to be more interesting than the current system.

Plus I get to make those choices between wipes, without having to hearth and get summoned back. In the past when working on a new progression boss I've adjusted my spec very slightly each night to see if I can make a tiny difference, I can now do it multiple times a night which is great.

Obviously this is from a PvE point of view.

---------- Post added 2011-12-09 at 11:50 AM ----------

Originally Posted by rodrigj

Except perhaps for pvp (can't say, don't play really pvp) there is no fun in thoses so called talents...

How many fun talents can you name that are not considered mandatory in the current system?

As for moaning about nerfs, get over it, some things need nerfs.

If you think all the talents of pvp oriented then you aren't playing to your full potential in a raid.

No its not political correctness, its good business sense. You don't openly tell people they are wrong, people resent that. You tell them things like "we have taken your comments on board" and stuff like that.

But... they ARE wrong, and if they don't tell them they're wrong, they'll just keep on complaining about it (some people will anyway though).
Also, people need to stop getting their panties in a twist when someone tells them they're wrong (with proper argumentation). People are wrong all the time, fucking deal with it

Compare the amount of balance patches per expansion to each other.
Compare the degree of those changes per expansion.

Looking at each like this, it is clear that blizzard has completely lost touch with how to balance their game. I have not played Cata, but lurked this site for the entirety. Every week I read about X ability being completely changed or Y ability's coefficient being massively adjusted.

And this is after supposedly "fixing" the stat system...which was broke 1 tier into content.

They haven't a clue what they are doing. They have taken the easy route and just decided to continually change the "rules" of each class constantly, in hopes it'll keep people quite.

Core issues are either ignored (Paladin mechanics) or removed from the game (Druid shapeshifting bonuses).

Personaly i love the <<You’re wrong. Next!>> catch phrace
I just remembered that kind of attitude are spcificly in wow forums atm
I remember when 4.1 came up , and i was schreaming with 1-2 more ppl that resto druid althought it deserve the nerf of istant root , we where crying that the healing in pvp was too low .
And flood of ppl came vs us , saying <<L2P noobs>> <<u have 1550 rating get out and close the door , none will miss u>> and <<look on 3 resto druids on top of the 3v3 in some servrers and shut up !>> , although they took the exploit of istant root , while damage was lower than the ress+hp of pvp gear

While at the end the thread was closed for heavily trolling(cause of the other 99%)

Some times u have to fight poison with poison
But this time he was joking

But that would be a lie. They don't want to take "comments on board" from the "everythin sucks!"-crowd. When I'm in a restaurant ordering a meal, I trust the cook to get it right and don't just because I am paying will walk over into his kitchen and talk down to him. He is the cook with the cooking experience, I am only the guy who will eat the meal. Sure if he adheres to my "no onions" plea, I will be glad, but if his experience tells him the meal falls flat without, he'll add them and produce something that is generally more well rounded even if it's not perfect for my spoiled palate. And if I don't like it, I'll walk out without a tip.

It's not exactly a lie, it's bending the truth. Saying something like "We'll take your comments/suggestions/complaints under advisement." allows Blizzard to both acknowledge that the player has made a complaint, legitimate or otherwise; as well as to distance themselves from any confirmation as to whether or not they actually do anything about it.

The point is, you don't have to say "Yes, we'll do that," but there are more polite ways of saying "No, we won't." It's about tact and the simple provision of respectful customer service. Moreover, I think the point that most people here are making when they say that "You're wrong" is the wrong thing to say, those individuals aren't saying that Blizzard CAN'T say it, they're saying Blizzard SHOULDN'T say it. Their method escalates the issue, whereas a more diplomatic route has the potential to leave all parties feeling satisfied with the outcome.

It depends on what you count as your performance, none of the choices will make a significant difference to your HPS or DPS but can make a huge difference to your performance. With shaman I can't see any tier that will have as large a difference as speccing into telluric currents currently has, which is a bit disappointing. But then again I know shaman who had telluric currents who didn't cast lightning bolt and it didn't really make any difference to their performance.

Working out when its best to put that left over point in cleansing waters rather than acuity is not interesting. Out of the 6 valid shaman resto specs there are 2 interesting choices, if you should go for telluric current and if you should go for ghost wolf. Everything else is either mandatory or boring. Out of the first 20 points you put into resto shaman spec 19 are mandatory and without them you seriously gimp yourself, having 1 point to play with is not interesting. After that you have 11 mandatory points in the resto tree which opens up the other trees, from there you get to choose if you want to get elemental precision, if you do then all of you have no choice where to put your points.

So 1 viable spec has 1 boring choice in it.

If you decide not to go with elemental precision then you have to put 5 points into the elemental tree, many see this as mandatory which makes elemental precision not viable. So you now have 5 points, however, all of the places you can put the points require multiple points to be worthwhile (1 point in telluric currents for example is a waste, you either go all or nothing) So you can pick 2 from a list of 5 abilities: focused insight, telluric currents, ancestral swiftness, totemic reach, cleansing waters. As far as i'm concerned the only interesting ones are telluric currents, ancestral swiftness and to a lesser extent focused insight. You then put any left over points into acuity.

So I've made one boring choice to get access to the top of the resto tree, I've then made a couple of interesting choices with my left over points. Only 1 of those choices (getting telluric currents or not) is more interesting than the new talent system. Not every tier is going to be an interesting choice, on certain bosses there wont be any choice for a tier. But, except for the very rare pure tank and spank fight, my talent choices are going to be more interesting than the current system.

Plus I get to make those choices between wipes, without having to hearth and get summoned back. In the past when working on a new progression boss I've adjusted my spec very slightly each night to see if I can make a tiny difference, I can now do it multiple times a night which is great.

Obviously this is from a PvE point of view.[COLOR="red"]

Maybe I am not getting you but... you mean there is no difference but in MoP you just don't have to click those mandatory talents? But isn't that just more fun, to find out what is best and to play around with your talents, instead of getting a cookie cutter build right from the start?
Theorycrafting is part of the game. Having to find out what works best is part of the game. It's fun to do. It doesn't matter if you had cookie cutter builds already.

And what are you going to change in your spec? Are you going to change up Elemental Mastery, Nature's Swiftness and Echo of Elementals which will all have the same dps increase probably. Maybe Elemental Mastery will give you that little boost in burst damage. Well, it will be a very small difference... Just like the healing talents you get at level 60. Or you change snares. Like it matters with 9 or 24 other players in your group who will bring nearly the exact same skills to the raid.
You see, it doesn't matter in MoP what you spec. You get 3 talents every 15 levels which all give nearly the same results = NOT FUN.

That's why TBC was so much fun. You actually brought something to the group that mattered. It wasn't perfect but it was fun.
They are now making the whole game 'cookie cutted'. Just like the new quests. I understand it's convenient and maybe less frustrating because they are now all in the same place and easy to find etc. but it also makes the game boring. Three different difficulties is convenient but boring. It's much more fun to raid from tier to tier instead of from difficulty to difficulty and do the same bosses over and over again.

I really hope their accessibilty approach is going to fail hard because it's incredibly boring. There should be a good balance and I don't believe this is it.

---------- Post added 2011-12-09 at 02:21 PM ----------

Originally Posted by lilbuddhaman

Compare the amount of balance patches per expansion to each other.
Compare the degree of those changes per expansion.

Looking at each like this, it is clear that blizzard has completely lost touch with how to balance their game. I have not played Cata, but lurked this site for the entirety. Every week I read about X ability being completely changed or Y ability's coefficient being massively adjusted.

And this is after supposedly "fixing" the stat system...which was broke 1 tier into content.

They haven't a clue what they are doing. They have taken the easy route and just decided to continually change the "rules" of each class constantly, in hopes it'll keep people quite.

Core issues are either ignored (Paladin mechanics) or removed from the game (Druid shapeshifting bonuses).

I won't even bother lurking during MoP, there's no point.

This whole balancing thing got out of hand. It's ridiculous how many changes they make every time. I didn't PvP but I guess it's one hell of a job to keep track of all the changes. It matters less what other classes can do in PvE.
They should make far less changes and just stick with something. Who cares if one class is top dps in tier 1 but in tier 3 it's lowest for a while. If that's a long term problem then come with a good solution instead of adding 3% damage to a skill and then next week drop it back to 2% and then after a month make it 5% or just let it be. Stupid balancing is ruining the game and it's never ever going to be balanced anyway. That's also the reason why they simplify everything so it's easier to balance but also makes it boring as hell.

Compare the amount of balance patches per expansion to each other.
Compare the degree of those changes per expansion.

Looking at each like this, it is clear that blizzard has completely lost touch with how to balance their game. I have not played Cata, but lurked this site for the entirety. Every week I read about X ability being completely changed or Y ability's coefficient being massively adjusted.

And this is after supposedly "fixing" the stat system...which was broke 1 tier into content.

They haven't a clue what they are doing. They have taken the easy route and just decided to continually change the "rules" of each class constantly, in hopes it'll keep people quite.

Core issues are either ignored (Paladin mechanics) or removed from the game (Druid shapeshifting bonuses).

I won't even bother lurking during MoP, there's no point.

I would love to have seen how the game would be right now if the 'A' team never left and this failure of a lead dev was never put in charge. I know that I and my guild would probably still be playing.

And simply for P.R. reasons if nothing else, if i were in charge right now watching my game crash and burn, i would immediately fire GC and put someone else in charge. And do it publicly with lots of noise so the player base understands that blizz knows they screwed up and they are working to fix things. Honestly that should have been one of the first things they did once it was confirmed that hundreds of thousands of people were quitting the game the beginning of this year. There seems to be no one in charge out there with any kind of business sense, leaving this guy in charge and letting him put out posts like this is the absolute worst thing this company could be doing.